Conventional information processing environments universally strive to improve throughput and processing capabilities by identifying bottlenecks and resource contention and redirecting, streamlining, or complementing the processing to mitigate inefficiency. Often, redirection of a processing stream to a more specialized processing mechanism improves performance by offloading such specialized or computationally intensive processing to the specialized processing mechanism rather than burdening a primary resource such as processor or bus. For example, early PCs employed math co-processors to complement the main processor for engineering and scientific applications requiring substantial floating point computations and/or high precision accuracy. Such specialized processing mechanism relieve the main processing resources of tasks which, although they are capable of handling, can more effectively be completed by such specialized resources not burdened with the general task handling responsibility.
In modern times, specialized processing mechanisms such as SSL offloaders, storage device subsystems, and encryption hardware, for example, are often incorporated into a base computer system to suit application specific demands. Such specialized processing mechanisms allow a common, widely installed computer system, such as a Windows or Unix based PC, to be deployed in specialized applications while still maintaining a widely accepted platform for integration with other computer systems, networks, and applications. A variety of specialized peripheral devices and interface are currently available for integration with a computer system such as a PC. These specialized peripheral devices enable processing advantages to suit particular applications, such as, for example, communications, multimedia and video, real time control interfaces, swipeable card readers, and other applications.